The nucleon axial mass and the MiniBooNE CCQE neutrino-nucleus data

Abstract

We analyze the MiniBooNE CCQE $d\sigma/dT_\mu d\cos\theta_\mu$ data using a theoretical model that has proved to be quite successful in the analysis of nuclear reactions with electron, photon and pion probes. We find that RPA and multinucleon knockout turn out to be essential for the description of the MiniBooNE data. We show these measurements are fully compatible with former determinations of nucleon axial mass $M_A$, in contrast with several previous analyses, which have suggested an anomalously large value. We find, $M_A=1.08 \pm 0.03$ GeV. We also argue that the procedure, commonly used to reconstruct the neutrino energy for QE events from the muon angle and energy, could be unreliable for a wide region of the phase space, due to the large importance of multinucleon events.